Telling me 'This function has been removed from some SAPIs in PHP 5.3.' is pretty much useless and I feel mocked. Or do the writers of the documentation don't know from which SAPIs it has been removed?

If you need to load an extension from the CURRENT local directory because you do not have privelages to place the extension in your servers PHP extensions directory, this function i wrote may be of use to you

<?php
/*
Function: dl_local()
Reference: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.dl.php Author: Brendon Crawford <endofyourself |AT| yahoo>
Usage: dl_local( "mylib.so" );
Returns: Extension Name (NOT the extension filename however)
NOTE:
This function can be used when you need to load a PHP extension (module,shared object,etc..),
but you do not have sufficient privelages to place the extension in the proper directory where it can be loaded. This function
will load the extension from the CURRENT WORKING DIRECTORY only.
If you need to see which functions are available within a certain extension,
use "get_extension_funcs()". Documentation for this can be found at
"http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.get-extension-funcs.php".
*/

Like with eval(), the only correct way to use dl() is to not use it.Test if a function(s) you intend to use are available.If not, complain to the user or implement a workaround.Not to mention dl() issues in a multithreading environment.

Changelog 5.3: dl() is now disabled in some SAPIs due to stability issues. The only SAPIs that allow dl() are CLI and Embed. Use the Extension Loading Directives instead.

If using PEAR libraries that try to load extensions, like Image_Transform which will try to load ImageMagik, and the "enable_dl" directive is set to 1 in your php.ini, you may end up with a hard to find error (white screen of death).

One "solution" is to change the enable_dl directive to 0 in the php.ini. It may have adverse affects if you are using php on command line that requires the "dl" function, but I think in most cases its okay.